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There aren’t tons of details about what Sony is alluding too, but they have outwardly admitted to U.S. antitrust investigations. Antitrust regulators are taking a closer look at Sony's optical disk drive operations.
Sony Optiarc America, in particular, produces the Sony line of optical disk drives for DVD, CD, and Blu-ray media formats and is the focus of the investigation. Sony didn’t hint to which products are of interest, but if you like to follow the gossip circles (or have a bit of common-sense) it is likely something to do with Blu-ray.
Blu-ray’s prices have yet to see the traditional price declination expected from a hot technology that has been released over three years ago. In fact, prices have remained steady over that time despite HD-DVD disappearing from the picture.
Further, the technology hasn’t skyrocketed in popularity the way Sony expected and antitrust investigations are not likely to help that process along.
Comments are closed on this article
mattixxg
November 02, 2009 at 8:47pm
Ok first of all..US speeds arent even close enough generally to support FULL downloadable HD 1080p content.
Plus, the clowns posting on here forgot the bandwidth caps being put into place from some ISPs.Also...the laughable idiots complaining about blu ray prices...*rolls eyes*, if you go to amazon, instead of whining like a child on here just looking for something to complain about, ive seen blu rays from 10 to 30 bucks.
Its YOUR fault you dont see the deals, because they are always out there.
For the clown that said short lived tech blah blah...seriously, youre pathetic. Yes, we know you hate blu ray and sony, but like it or not, its here, and its not going anywhere soon. Same with DVD i mean what are you..an HD DVD lover?
You still butt hurt about that?Get over it.
Some of the stuff you so called "tech" people post on here without investigation is just downright emberassing.
Deanjo
October 27, 2009 at 8:18pm
Blu Ray is a short lived tech anyhows. HD VOD is where the future is. It's already too small to be a viable backup solution as well with the advent of multi TB drives.
bathtbgin
October 27, 2009 at 10:09pm
VOD will probably kill the rental market in a few years but when it comes to sales there are people like myself who will continue to prefer actually owning a physical copy of a movie for several reasons. As long as the physical disc is not damaged I dont have to worry about the movie not playing because the license key expired or the company is having server problem, and I can play it when i dont have internet access. That actually brings me to another point, the 25-50GB needed to store 1080P content with uncompressed 7.1 channel audio is a lot of data, to give you an idea a 1TB hard drive will only let you store between 20 and 40 discs of content which can easily be taken up by some movies and a few seasons of a TV show. The other thing you need to remember about streaming that much data is that its going to require a VERY fast connection to deliver the same audio and picture quality, and you had better hope your ISP doesnt have a cap on how much you can download in a month because even with comcasts 250GB limit you'll still only be able to watch 5 movies per month.
DBsantos77
October 27, 2009 at 7:26pm
I can give a shit less about Blu-Ray. No way I'm going to pay $30 for a DVD that I'm only going to watch a couple of times. Maybe if the prices drop I'll consider it. Hopefully SONY will get a good kick in the balls.
-Santos
smuckjones
October 27, 2009 at 5:52pm
Sony once again was late to the party. They "won" the HD DVD war, but it was a hollow victory. With blazing fast downloads and media PC's, who needs an expensive DVD player?
preacher1010
October 27, 2009 at 4:59pm
Big big news!
maybe Blu-ray prices will finally come down after arrogant Sony have been kicked in the arse.
and stop with all these DVD / BR region encoding bullshite.
"The simple and plain fact is, Blu-Ray and
DVD region restrictions exist for the simple reason of keeping
competition from certain regions (like the USA) from keeping prices low
in others (like Europe.)"
